I've got at least five. Why? Each one has its own advantages.

Across the board, all over the world, the political parties that are most aligned with russia/Putin are rightwing, in Europe, in the US, everywhere... so yeah there are leftwing idiots here who support russia but also gestures at the globe again it kinda feels like a distorting narrative to focus on.

With the difference that I haven’t seen many rightwing chuds around here (thank god)

Here is the thing, there are lots of rightwing chuds with extremely toxic beliefs that use fediverse software, some of them have even tried to integrate with the larger fediverse... but invariably these rightwing communities end up being so toxic that nobody wants to connect with them.

Trump's bullshit Truth Social is literally just stolen Mastodon code that doesn't really need to have any federation capability because again nobody wants to connect with them....

Just a moment...

(www.pcmag.com)

My point is that maybe the reason you see more leftwing idiots here than relative to your experience in other mediums/spaces is that while there are dangerous idiots of every type leftism does not largely endorse ideologies of violence and exclusion no matter how much conservative snowflakes accuse leftism of being this way it is just projection... so the instances you are on may not feel the need to censor leftist communities the way they do the equally "extreme" rightwing communities because the leftists don't start attacking the humanity of trans people and harassing them in public, they don't engage in rampant antisemitism or islamophobia, leftism doesn't idolize the capacity for violence or obsess over there being specific ways you have to perform your gender socially, even if you hate leftists there just is way less reason to completely hard cut them off then there are for extremist rightwing communities...

Make no mistake though, there are tons of rightwing extremely toxic communities out there using fediverse software (or stolen fediverse software as is the case with Truth Social being stolen Mastodon code without attribution) and the reason you don't see them is they already caused too much of an issue for everybody in the community you joined that they burned the bridges that would naturally lead you to listen to them.

TL;DR You are more likely to run into a Hasan Piker type here gasp!!!! than a Tucker Carlson type because the Tucker Carlson types tend to say some really scary shit in the process of doing things like criticizing Israel, like genuine antisemitism or other things and they were already blocked by most normal communities that widely federate on the fediverse whereas the Hasan Piker types are just maybe from your perspective focused on the wrong politics but are not advocating directly for violence and exclusionary ideologies. The mainstream media and the billionaires who own corporate social media refuse to hold Tucker Carlson types accountable even when they say really twisted, evil things, the fediverse does not.

Also right here we've got communities for:

• !shavian@lemmy.world
• !languages@lemmy.world
• !linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works
• !esperanto@sopuli.xyz

And actually lots more, this is just a sample.

Most of us were clueless when we arrived here

The big complaints that people tend to have are that federation is a bit confusing, and that it's no where near as big as Reddit.

But I think sometimes people overlook the positive aspects of federation and smaller communities. Reddit is damn near unusable these days, and it's full of bots, slop, reposters, ads, and power tripping admins/mods. The Fediverse has been around for quite a few years now and still feels like a place for actual human beings with a lot of freedom to take things in different directions.